I'm furious. How to stop being mad controlling and let go!

Some of you may no me here. I post often. If not, I've been Primal for about 8 months now. I'm 5'4'' at 165lbs. I love primal and I wouldn't eat any other way. It was cured me of many health issues. Saying that, besides that, I'm furious because I see so much wonderful weight loss success and it just hasn't happened for me. I had to get on JUDDD to lose weight, I lost about 5 lbs, and I re gained it. It's not the gaining it back that bothers me, it's the fact that WHY can't it just work for me? I sometimes think I just need to "throw the towel in" and surrender into acceptance that maybe I just was meant to stay at 165. I'm just scared that I'll gain 10 more pounds if i'm not constantly tracking, doing JUDDD, IFing. It just doesn't seem stress free to feel like if I were to just not be on "IF" or "JUDDD" thinking that just "being" means i'll gain 10 more pounds, ya know?
The last Marks Daily Apple success post was pretty wonderful... but all she did was just switch to primal. Why doesn't that work for me!! ahhh it makes me so upset. I'm 26 yrs old. I don't want to worry my life away. I stopped cheese, didn't work, stopped nuts, that didn't work, it's like what am I holding on to? I'm just SO frustrated and most of all scared to just stop tracking, weighing, ifing, and just let myself be for awhile... that IF I was to gain another 10 pounds that the happiness of "calm" is worth it. I just eat so healthy and I don't friggin get it why it does "fall off" for me. Why do I have to struggle with this. sometimes I wish I was just one of those already high metabolism people skinny people who never have to worry about food. I'm sick of thinking about it, worrying, I'm already uncomfortable again because I gained back all the weight I lost from JUDDD. I"M SORRY IF I"M ANNOYING ANY OF YOU! BUT I JUST NEED TO FRIGGIN VENT.

Bottom line.. I want to stop being upset. I want to stop worrying. I want to be happy, I'm just so afraid of letting go of that control (tracking, ifing etc..) I'll just never be where I want. I want to just accept ME NOW, ya know? I feel I lost the battle, like I failed, my body wouldn't do it, wouldn't lose weight, at least I have my health, but I'm still chubby! I still don't fit into my clothes from before the last holidays... It's like I got up to a certain weight and there is just NO return, I get up to a certain weight again, no return. UGH.

i can tell you that each major loss for me corresponds to learning so meting major. like the time i lost 12 pounds overnight with cold baths which taught me i was still very inflamed. or the time i learned that my lead and mercury levels were extremely high and took steps to correct that.

food is rarely if ever the problem thus it cannot be much of a solution.

I am not in your situation and do not have your goals, so I'd be the first to say that there are many women on here with much better n=1 advice than I will ever be able to give you. With that acknowledged, I think you have answered your own question.

You haven't failed until you quit. So don't. You clearly want to change your body and your mind even more....so let go of the tracking and obsessing. I don't count cals or macros. I don't even really track my workouts that well. Because for ME, maybe like you, doing all of that starts to defeat the purpose of why I eat and exercise like I do to begin with. I am a contrarian on this forum sometimes because I have one big motto:

Simple works. Complexity fails.

If you can't stay on it, if it stresses you out to do it, then no amount of putting your food on a scale is going to mean anything. I like to break all of this stuff down to the essential, and let everyone else argue about the minutia.Here is all you need, in my opinion, to succeed at this approach:
1) Fatty meats should constitute most of your calories. Veg over fruit. Fruit over starches. Starches over grains. Do as much as you can. Freedom will give you discipline more than a "target calories" number for the day. Screw that
2) Fast for as long as you are comfortable, and try to give a roundabout time when you first eat for ghrelin's sake. It's why I don't like the JUDDD approach. I shoot for nothing before 2pm. Sometimes its 1:30. Sometimes it 7pm. Your body will tell you....for my money, nothing moves the "before and after" pics faster than the combination of fatty meats and fasting through long hikes.
3) Lift maybe 2-3 times a week. Heavy compound lifts with good form. Let yourself recover. No machines.
4) Walk, hike, chop wood, run in circles around your house, doesn't matter. Move a lot. 3-5 hours a week is bare minimum.

I completely understand the frustration you have. I am sure others can tell you more nuts and bolts of how they did it, but that is my 2c. Regimentation is overrated. Enthusiasm and the occasional extreme effort it begets trump it every time.

Yoga11, you are definitely not alone! I have more weight to lose than you do and PB didn't get me any closer to my goals. I'm 5'6" and 190. I both love and hate those sucess stories. Some days they motivate me, but most of the time they honestly piss me off a little. Most of the people featured were not overweight for their entire lives, for one thing. My body has basically never known a healthy weight. I think that makes it much harder to get to one.

In any event, I was feeling very desperate the week before last. I was about to go back to the doctor that prescribed me phentermine in 2008 and get another script so I could control my eating (meaning starve myself) enough to lose weight. I decided, instead, to read The Fast Metabolism Diet and started following it. I got the book from the library and since I was about to subject myself to drugs with a bunch of awful side effects I figured I'd give it a shot. Much to my shock it has actually worked so far. I have no idea if it'll work in the long run, but for right now it's what I needed. Maybe it's worth checking out.

I don't know what the solution is to stop feeling so mad about this. It's not fair and it sucks! I have put so much of my life on hold because of my weight... it is insane! I decided I'm not doing that anymore and for the most part I just do what I want now regardless of how I'll look doing it. It's tough though. I'm so tired of hearing people complain about their weight when,I would be thrilled if I looked like them or weighed what they did. It is frustrating, indeed.

Edited to add: Fasting has never worked for me! Neither has counting calories. My latest wave of desperation came after 3 weeks of very meiculous calorie counting that left me with a 3 pound weight gain. Totally not worth it.

Nivan, I'm tried every macro, calories, exericise.. 1800 cal to 1500 cal, 70%fat-80%fat, 20carbs to under 100 carbs. I've tried it all and over time i've tried it. I exercise regularly. Sometimes I think it's because I'm such a regular at exercising that THAT might be what stalls me? either way, I don't know if I even care anymore... I've been looking SO hard and SO close at this for almost a year and I"m TIRED of looking for that ANSWER. I'm exhausted. I feel helpless. I just am tired of caring so much with no result. it's making me more unhappy and I still the same weight.. I feel like I could of just been happy and been the same weight, instead I'm frustrated, uncomfortable, and failed. UGH I want to delete this letter because i'm so embarrassed about how I feel. I'm going to hit "send" anyway...

And finally, if your weight isn't shifting, the best thing you can do is focus your attention onto loving and appreciating your body for what it is. You can want to make improvements, but I honestly think that any kind of self hatred or abuse just sabotages weight loss and makes the process torturous. This is a thread that helped a lot of women here see through the trap of chronic dieting: What I gave up

"I think the basic anti-aging diet is also the best diet for prevention and treatment of diabetes, scleroderma, and the various "connective tissue diseases." This would emphasize high protein, low unsaturated fats, low iron, and high antioxidant consumption, with a moderate or low starch consumption.

In practice, this means that a major part of the diet should be milk, cheese, eggs, shellfish, fruits and coconut oil, with vitamin E and salt as the safest supplements."

Hey there, I'm not going to be of any help, but I just wanted to say: It's okay to be frustrated and it sounds like you need to vent somewhere. Do you have a journal here on MDA? Sometimes it helps just to get your thoughts out about the whole weight loss process and how you are feeling about your body. Or anything, really. It sounds like you might have some stress going on beyond just trying to slim down.

Since you mentioned it, I'm curious what kind of exercise you are doing (and how much).

Journal
Current interests - Starting Strength (reading it very slowly)

It's quite possible that you need a "diet break" to reset your metabolism/hormones such as leptin and thyroid. If you've been dieting non-stop for a very long period of time, it's possible that your metabolism has down-regulated, which could explain your stall in progress.

This may not be what you want to hear, but maybe take a week or two during which you eat at your maintenance calories, do some activity that you enjoy, and try to avoid the stress. I know this is difficult, but sometimes it's best to take a break and forget about all of the details that go along with fat loss.

Constantly being stressed out is not going to help you reach your goal; I know, I've been there. Like I said, maybe the best option is to take a week or two at maintenance calories to give your metabolism a chance to "reboot", and then reassess from there.